TITLE IX: OTHER NM HEROES
TARYN BACHIS: A star on coach Steve Silverberg’s first Eldorado state championship girls basketball team, Bachis went on to play at UNM and Kansas State. She coached a state championship volleyball team at Moriarty High School before moving to Albuquerque Academy in 1987. She has spent 35 years at Academy as a coach and administrator.
VAL BOYER: Boyer won six events as a sprinter-long jumper at the 1976 and 1977 New Mexico state track meets, leading Manzano to Class AA state title in ‘77. Boyer went on to compete at Arizona State and for the U.S. internationally. She was inducted into the Albuquerque (now New Mexico) Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.
As Valerye Boyer-Wells, she recently retired as a Mesa, Arizona city magistrate.
ANNE GILLILAND: She was a versatile track athlete at Del Norte — hurdles, high jump, long jump — from 1976-78. Gilliland, an Olympic heptathlon prospect, was killed at age 19 by a lightning strike while water skiing. The Anne Gilliland Memorial Scholarship was established in her name.
ELLEN HART: An outstanding agegroup track athlete, Hart won the 1974 girls mile run for Albuquerque Academy at the second-ever New Mexico state girls track meet. Hart also starred in basketball for the Chargers, then participated in three varsity sports — basketball, soccer and track and field — at Harvard.
After a long and successful career as a runner, Hart, a Boulder, Colorado resident, later transitioned to triathlon.
Hart was the subject of a 1996 TV movie, “Dying to Be Perfect,” dealing with her real-life struggles with eating disorders. She has served on the President’s Council on Fitness and Sports.
SALLY MARQUEZ: Marquez played basketball and volleyball and ran track at Manzano. She was the first recipient of the George J. Maloof Award, a $1,000 scholarship intended for a high school student, male or female, who excelled in the classroom as well as in athletics.
She played four years of basketball at UNM, then was an assistant girls basketball coach at Eldorado and the head coach at La Cueva, moved to Virginia to earn a master’s degree in education administration, then returned to Albuquerque to begin a career in that field.
She has worked at the New Mexico Activities Association since 2004, the last decade as the NMAA’s Executive Director.